Re: [DotGNU]To What Degree Jabber?

[Bradley M. Kuhn]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:

>     XMLRPC, SOAP, jabber:middleware

> How do they relate to the use of the GNU Groupware Standards?  Are they
> alternatives to it?  Do they do different jobs in a complementary way?

These are lower level communications standards; GNU Groupware Standards
would be implemented on top of them.  The GNU Groupware Standards folks
agreed that XML-RPC would be used when it had enough functionality to do
the job, and SOAP when that wasn't enough.

Some representatives of GNU Enterprise, DotGNU, and phpGroupware should
probably have a conversation about how jabber:middleware will fit in to
all those projects.  (It sounds like the DotGNU folks believe it will be a
win for some things, but we should get input from the other GNU groups
that might need to integrated with it before we charge ahead).


Meanwhile, our Chief Sysadmin (and general cool hacker) at the FSF, Paul
Fisher, has suggested that we should look seriously at BEEP and APEX as
well.  BEEP is defined by RFC's 3080 and 3081, and there is an IETF
Working Group for APEX.

There is also an IETF draft for XML-RPC over BEEP, and for SOAP over BEEP.
So, we don't have to abandon use of SOAP or XML-RPC if we choose to use
BEEP.  APEX, as I understand it, would serve the same middleware level of
XML-RPC, SOAP, and/or jabber:middleware.

Meanwhile, Paul mentioned to me that APEX/BEEP is probably
technologically superior to jabber:middleware, because it was designed
from the ground up to be generalized, whereas jabber:middleware was
original for instant messaging only and later adapted for other
applications.

I suggest we have another IRC meeting with the folks involved to discuss
this.  The GNU Enterprise folks do, in the end, want to develop an easy
API for these protocols that abstract them away, and only for more
esoteric uses would one need to get into the guts of them.  This is a hard
job, and it will probably take them a while to get there, so it is good in
the meantime to have a "pecking order" of RPC-ish protocols that are
favored by GNU projects.

   -- bkuhn

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